DYB2011-Part-II-web

C h a p t e r I I I
Conventional weapons issues
The United Nations is confronted with lax controls on the small arms trade in
many parts of the world. Whether it is promoting sustainable development,
protecting human rights, carrying out peacekeeping efforts, delivering food
aid, improving public health, advancing gender equality, building safer
cities, protecting forcibly displaced persons or fighting crime and terrorism,
the Organization faces armed violence, conflict and civil unrest involving
violations of international law, abuses of the rights of children, civilian
casualties, humanitarian crises and missed social and economic opportunities.
Developments and trends, 2011
Ban Ki-moon, United nations secretary-General 1
world military expenditure in 2011 exceeded $1.7 trillion, although it rose
by just 0.3 per cent from the previous year and was also significantly less than
the consistently high increases since 1998. 2 The global economic crisis and
budget deficit pressures led some major defence spending nations to reduce
their military outlays during the year.
Meanwhile, the easy availability of conventional arms and ammunition,
in particular small arms and light weapons, continued to fuel repression,
crime and terror, causing considerable suffering to civilian populations.
The uncontrolled transfers of conventional arms also continued to fuel
civil conflicts, enabling violations of Security Council arms embargoes and
endangering development prospects in many countries.
The problems arising from the uncontrolled spread of conventional arms,
however, led to intensive efforts in the United Nations for significant progress
towards an arms trade treaty and increased global support for such a treaty.
In 2011, the General Assembly engaged in hectic preparatory work for the
long-awaited conference on an arms trade treaty, scheduled for 2012, which is
supposed to establish the highest possible common international standards for
the transfer of conventional arms.
1 Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council on small arms, S/2011/255, para. 7.
2 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “17 April 2012: world military spending
levels out after 13 years of increases, says SIPRI”. Available from http://www.sipri.org/
media/pressreleases/17-april-2012-world-military-spending-levels-out-after-13-years-ofincreases-says-sipri
(accessed 4 June 2012).
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